by Chris Barrus
It seems odd that such a highly developed civilization has not yet found a way to combat parasites. These pesky creatures build huge hives or nests which often block or slow down the orderly progress of the earthling. However, the earthling seems to have this matter in hand. The eradication of these pests is obviously a top priority job for the working class.
Kaj Pindal & Les Drew’s awesome animated short What On Earth! – now available on YouTube.
Back when it was still fashionable to have band stickers on the back of your car I home-brewed up a Spectrum sticker using the back design of the “How You Satisfy Me” single. It’s a cool op-art design and later Sonic printed up a t-shirt with it for the 2002 tour.
I always figured that the origin of it was some sort of “generic” op-art design from the sixties and sure enough while hopping around on eBay I noticed this cover:
So it dates back to at least 1973. I’m sure that it’s something/someone famous that I should already be aware of but the archeology continues…
I took this photo on a family road trip in November 1976 when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Not surprisingly, even then I was obsessed with roadside culture. Who says you outgrow your childhood interests?
Nice to see that the El Bambi is still going strong too.
Good grief, I feel like I’ve discovered that some part of my brain has been miswired. I’ve owned this album since it was released and only now did I notice the connection between it
and this
Boing Boing posts about a run-down kiddie amusement park in Egypt and I was reminded about Rock-A-Hoola.
Rock-A-Hoola is (was?) a mostly closed-but-not-quite-totally-abandoned water park out in the Mojave Desert in Newberry Springs, CA. The park has been kicking around irregularly since at least the early-70s – I remember ads for Lake Dolores (as it was known back then) airing on KTLA in the cheap post-midnight airspace alongside Truckmaster School Of Trucking and Cal Worthington. Presumably the idea was for it to be a tourist/camping stopover on the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I couldn’t imagine anyone being excited to to there – it’s too far for a day trip from LA and not much there to give you a reason to stay. I suppose there’s always the Vegas crowd, but it seem like they always REALLY want to get to Vegas.
Anyway, I snagged some photos of the place in October 2003. The main water slide part of the park was fenced off (and patrolled by dogs) but I got some pictures of the surrounding facilities. I still have to question the long-term viability of a water park in an area with little water and abundant evaporation, but that’s not stopping folks from dreaming.
Lake Dolores / Rock-A-Hoola on Wikipedia
Rock-A-Hoola in better days.
KrazyDad posts about an airplane he took a picture of and commented on how soon after posting the picture, a commenter ID’ed the plane and posted links to another photo of the same plane after it had collided with another plane on the ground.
I had a similar experience late last year. On the trip east in January 2005, I was randomly driving around New Orleans, taking pictures, gawking at houses, all the usual tourist stuff. Suddenly I ran across the most amazing looking movie theater – an art deco wonder that reminded me of the old May Company building on Wilshire Blvd. here in L.A. Clearly, the theater was the winner of the neighborhood “which one of these is not like the other” architectural game and a picture was an absolute must. I remember that the intersection was pretty busy and I had to circle the block a couple of times before I could get something in focus and that’s what is over there on the right. In retrospect I should have just parked the damn car.
After Katrina, I had wondered what happened to the Coliseum and late last year I got an email from someone who ran across my photo and pointed me to some aftermath photos – the groovy facade took a heavy beating, but the building was still hanging in there. In October, some tarps went up and apparently was being restored and transformed into a studio. I hadn’t thought about it for awhile until I read KrazyDad’s post on the kindness of helpful strangers, remembered the random post-Katrina emailer and took a look.
The Coliseum burned to the ground in February of this year and Flickr is there to hold the documentation and the memories.
Update: Cinema Treasures’ page for the Coliseum.
Congrats to the CLUI for winning the 2005 Lucelia Artist Award.
CLUI is currently running a “greatest hits” package with mini exhibits of “Emergency State,” “Loop Feedback Loop,” and other recent shows along with the main “Vacation: Dauphin Island” exhibition. I’ve seen plenty of “dead vacation spots” collections, but the Dauphin Island set is incredibly striking – I’d shell out for a coffee-table sized book of them.
Dauphin Island (more of a sandbar than an actual island) itself is even sketchier shape than Grand Isle area of Louisiana. As you might have surmised, Katrina practically sank the island and it’s only barely reopen now – just in time for the next hurricane season.
I had no idea it was there… I wish I stopped in on the road trip east last year.